IV. Background

Libya, formally known as the Great Socialist People’s
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, is a large country, 1,759,540 square kilometers
(679,363 sq. miles), with a population of just over 6 million.[2]
The vast Sahara Desert encompasses more than 90 percent of the country, and the
majority of the population lives on the Mediterranean coast. The United Nations
Development Program ranks Libya 55out of 182 countries on its Human
Development Index.[3]

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, police and security forces
arrested hundreds of Libyans who opposed, or who the authorities feared could
oppose, the new system. Authorities labeled critics “stray dogs”
and rounded up academics, lawyers, students, journalists, Trotskyists,
communists, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and others considered
“enemies of the revolution,” imprisoning or subjecting them to
enforced disappearance.[4]
Another wave of internal repression came in 1989, with the government
instituting “mass arbitrary arrest and detention, ‘disappearances,’
torture, and the death penalty.”[5]
No form of dissent was tolerated and Libya openly espoused a policy of
assassinating Libyan dissidents abroad.[6]

Libya’s international isolation intensified in the
late 1980s after a number of attacks abroad were attributed to Libyan agents.
In December 1988, Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing
270 people. This was followed by the bombing of UTA flight 772 over Niger in
1989, killing 170.The U.S. and European governments blamed al-Gaddafi for the
attacks. In January 1992, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 731,
which ordered Libya to surrender the suspects in the two plane bombings,
cooperate with the investigations, pay compensation to the victims' families,
and cease all support for terrorism. This was followed in March 1992 by
Security Council Resolution 748, which imposed an air and arms embargo on
Libya. The embargo had a negative impact on Libya's economy. It was further
strengthened by Security Council Resolution 883 in November 1993 which imposed
a limited asset freeze and an embargo on select oil equipment.

In 1999 Libya improved its relations with Western Europe and
the United States by surrendering two Libyan nationals suspected of the Pan Am
bombing. A Scottish court in the Netherlands subsequently acquitted one of the
men and sentenced the other, `Abd al-Basit al-Megrahi, to life in prison in
2001. In a controversial decision, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Justice
released al-Megrahi on August 20, 2009, citing his terminal illness, and
returned him to Libya. Crowds at Tripoli airport waving Scottish flags greeted
him upon return, an orchestrated affair which was condemned as a hero’s
welcome by much of the western media and by many governments.

International
Re-integration

The turning point in Libya’s relationship with the
international community came in December 2003 when Libya announced it would
give up its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs and limit its long-range
missiles.[7]
Libya said it would comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the
Biological Weapons Convention, sign the International Atomic Energy Agency
Additional Protocol and adhere to the Chemical Weapons Convention. In August
2003, Libya accepted "responsibility for the actions of Libyan
officials" for the Pan Am and UTA bombings and agreed to pay compensation
to the families.[8]
The US-Libya compensation deal was signed in August 2008[9]
and by November 2008 the families announced that they had received 100% of the
compensation.[10]
As one State Department official put it, the past six years have witnessed a
"gradual, step-by-step normalization" of U.S.-Libyan relations.[11]

In May 2006 then-U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
announced that the U.S. was “restoring full diplomatic relations with
Libya” and would remove it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism
where it had been since December 1979.[12] In August 2008 the
US and Libya signed a claims settlement agreement, indemnifying each other
against outstanding lawsuits for bombings attributed to Libya and US airstrikes
in the 1990s. In September 2008 Condoleezza Rice became the first U.S.
Secretary of State to visit Libya since 1953. On November 20, 2008, the US
Senate confirmed Gene Cretz as U.S. Ambassador to Libya, the first American
ambassador there in over 35 years.[13]

The thawing of relations between Libya and the U.S. has been
particularly significant in terms of counter-terrorism cooperation. Libya is
regarded as a partner in the fight against terrorism and continues to share intelligence
on militant Islamists with Western governments.[14]
Since 2004, the US has rendered a number of Libyan former CIA detainees to
Libya,[15]
five of whom Human Rights Watch was able to interview in April 2009. Human
Rights Watch was the first organization to confirm their detention in Libya. In
addition, on December 18, 2006, the US government returned Libyan citizen
Mohamed al-Rimi from Guantanamo Bay to Libya, followed by Sofian Hamoodah on
September 30, 2007.

On October 18, 2005 Libya and the United Kingdom
signed a Memorandum of Understanding “to facilitate deportation of
persons suspected of activities associated with terrorism,”[16]
which Human Rights Watch had said would put them at serious risk of torture.[17]
On April 27, 2007, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that the
United Kingdom could not return two terrorism suspects to Libya due to the risk
of torture and unfair trials, a decision confirmed in appeal on April 9, 2008.[18]

Other European governments and the European Union have
also strengthened ties with Libya recently, driven by business interests and
encouraged by Libya's cooperation in combating terrorism and illegal
migration. EU sanctions against Libya were lifted in 2004 and Libya and
the EU signed a memorandum of understanding on July 23, 2007. In November 2008,
negotiations on an EU-Libya Framework Agreement covering areas such as
“political dialogue, trade, energy, migrations and environment”
began in Brussels.[19]
The negotiations are ongoing with another round scheduled to take place in
November 2009.

The resolution of one of the main sticking points in
EU-Libyan relations, the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian
doctor, also paved the way for improved relations. The health workers had been
in prison since 1999, convicted of deliberately infecting 426 children with
HIV. Their release in July 2007 came as a result of negotiations that
intensified after Bulgaria’s entry into the European Union in January of
that year. The Libyan High Judicial Council commuted the healthcare
workers’ death sentences, following a deal with the European Union to
upgrade Libyan-EU relations, which Libyan sources said included compensating
the victims’ families with a US$1 million per child.[20]

The intervention of French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the
case ended with his then-wife Cecilia Sarkozy accompanying the nurses and
doctor on their flight out of Libya,[21]
Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi was invited on a state visit to France in December
2007, his first visit to Europe in 34 years.[22] He signed
billions of dollars in contracts during his stays in France and Spain on that
trip.[23]
Earlier that year Russia's then-president Vladimir Putin signed
multi-billion-dollar arms and energy deals during a visit to Libya in April,
the first by a Russian president.

Italy and Libya solidified their close relationship with a
number of agreements and joint initiatives. On August 30, 2008 both countries
signed the “The Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation between
the Italian Republic and Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya” which called for “intensifying” cooperation in
“fighting terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking and illegal
immigration.”[24]
In September 2008 Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi visited Libya,
pledging US$5 billion in reparations for "the damage inflicted"
during Italy's colonial rule. Berlusconi said Italy would receive increased
access to Libyan oil and gas and "fewer clandestine immigrants." On
May 15, 2009 an agreement to conduct joint Libyan-Italian naval patrols of
Libyan shores went into effect. In June 2009, Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi made
his first state visit to Italy [25]
and returned the following month to attend the G8 summit in L'Aquila,
Italy. In September 2009, Human Rights Watch published a report Pushed
Back Pushed Around describing the negative impact this agreement has had on
the rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.[26]

In October 2007 Libya won a seat on the UN Security Council
and it held the rotating presidency in January 2009.[27]
In February 2009 Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi became chairman
of the African Union at a summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and on June 10, 2009
the General Assembly elected former Libyan secretary for African Affairs Ali
Treki President of its sixty-fourth session. On September 23, 2009,
Mu’ammar Gaddafi gave a 96-minute speech at the opening session of the UN
General Assembly in which he criticized the UN system and the Security Council.
However, he refrained from making provocative remarks towards the United States
or the West in general, avoiding sensitive subjects such as the return of
Megrahi, which indicates a desire on his part to maintain good relations with
the West.

Libya is party to the seven core international human rights
treaties, although not all of

their optional protocols. It ratified the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in 1976, the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1989, the
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading

Treatment or Punishment (CAT) in 1989, the African Charter
on Human and Peoples' Rights in 1986, and the African Charter on the Rights and
Welfare of the Child in 2003. Libya has taken strong positions against signing
the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court with Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi calling the latter
a “new world terrorism.”[28]

Reform Initiatives

Human rights observers have, for years, criticized the
Libyan penal code for violating freedom of expression and association and for
excessively heavy sentences.[29]
The Libyan authorities first announced their intention to amend the penal code
in 2003. Then-Secretary of Justice `Ali `Umar Abu Bakr told Human Rights Watch
in May 2005 that by the end of that year the experts were due to submit a new
penal code to the Basic People’s Congresses for debate.[30] A
draft obtained by Amnesty International in 2004 contained many articles that
were inconsistent with Libya’s obligations under international human
rights law. Vague terms in some articles, such as “spreading
rumors,” “insult,” and “harming the reputation of the country,”
appeared as if they could lead to the death penalty being imposed for the
peaceful expression of political views.[31] In October
2005, Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi spoke before the Higher Judicial Council
calling for a revision of the penal code; “I want the men and women of
Libya to create their penal code so that this is the first time that a people
creates its own penal code which will then run it.”[32]

Chief Justice of the Libyan Supreme Court, Dr. Abdulrahman
Tuta, told Human Rights Watch in April 2009 that he chaired a committee
composed of judges, lawyers and academics which drafted a new penal code.[33]
The Secretary of Justice Mostafa Abdeljalil told Human Rights Watch that the
draft penal code would be formally presented in the summer of 2009 to the Basic
People’s Congresses for discussion. This would be the first step
toward its adoption but as of the time of this writing this has yet to take
place. [34]
Under Libya’s political system, each congress may approve or reject the
proposal, or approve it with reservations. The code will come into force if
approved by the General People’s Congress.

At a rare public meeting at the Tripoli Bar Association in
April 2008, a number of Libyan lawyers openly criticized the latest version of
the draft penal code for its continued repression of basic freedoms and the
pervasiveness of the death penalty.[35]
In January 2009, Human Rights Watch received the latest version of the draft
penal code and in June 2009 sent the Libyan authorities its comments and
recommendations on the proposed provisions to bring them into compliance with
international human rights law. The new draft limits the number of provisions
providing for the death penalty and reduces many of the sentences but retains
provisions criminalizing freedom of expression and association. [36]

Even the General People’s Committee for Public
Security seems aware of the need to evolve with the times; its website now has
a form for “complaints to remedy any mistakes.”[37]
The Libyan Secretary of Public Security, General Abdelfattah al-Obeidi, sought
to assure Human Rights Watch that he had issued a decision last year ordering
all officers not to hit or humiliate citizens in any way during the performance
of their duties. Yet he was unable to provide Human Rights Watch with any
information on the number of complaints received about such treatment or the
number of cases investigated by his ministry.[38] No information is
available on the number of officers prosecuted but a lawyer told Human Rights
Watch that the number is likely to be very low since “the General
Prosecutor can’t interrogate any officer without authorization from the
Secretary of Public Security and he always refuses.”[39]

Another sign that the General People’s Committee for
Public Security recognizes the need to show some effort towards displaying
awareness of human rights is the apparent establishment of human rights
training. In April 2009, Colonel Kamal El Dib told Human Rights Watch about the
human rights training programs he began running at the General People’s
Committee for Public Security in 2004. He said up to 60,000 officers have been
trained on issues including “human rights concepts, non-discrimination,
security and legitimacy, the torture convention, how the police should deal
with citizens and the Great Green Charter on Human Rights.”[40]
He said that this was a capacity-building project and that Libya had brought in
expert trainers from the UK, the US and Egypt. Human Rights Watch could
not verify the extent of this program or evaluate its content. While the impact
of human rights training is often difficult to assess, especially where there
is a culture of impunity for violations, it shows awareness on the part of the
General People’s Committee for Public Security of the need to have some
form of human rights program on display.

Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi, the son of Mu’ammar
al-Gaddafi, is generally perceived as the leader or sometimes spokesperson for
the “reformist” groups in Libyan government. His speeches in August
to Libyan youth associations had become the platform for reform. He used these
speeches to announce plans to draft a new constitution, a radical suggestion in
the context of his father’s vision of direct democracy. In August 2007
his speech “Libya - Truth for All” spoke candidly of some of the
human rights violations of the past and of the right of families to learn about
what had happened to their disappeared relatives.[41]
On August 22, 2008, however, Saif al-Islam announced that he was retiring from
political life and would confine himself to his charitable activities through
his foundation.[42]
Some analysts interpreted this as a sign of his receding power internally and
therefore also that of the so-called reformist members of government. On
October 12, however, two months after he escorted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi back to
Libya, the People’s Leadership Committees appointed Saif al-Islam
al-Gaddafi as their general coordinator, effectively making him the second most
important man in the country. The week before, Libyan Leader Mu’ammar
al-Gaddafi had asked the People’s Leadership Committees to find an
official position for his son Saif to “allow him to implement
reforms.”[43]

[4]
The National Front for the Salvation of Libya’s 1998 list of
2626prisoners, which relies on several different sources, gives an overview of
the different waves of arrest which took place, see National Front for the
Salvation of Libya, Human Rights Report, December 1998, http://www.libyanfsl.com
(accessed November 7, 2009).

[8]
United Nations Security Council, Resolution 1506 (2003), S/RES/1506 (2003)
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3f8d2e164.html (accessed September 29,
2009).Libya agreed to
pay the families of victims $10 million each-$4 million after the lifting of
U.N. sanctions, another $4 million after the lifting of U.S. sanctions based on
the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)and the last $2 million
when the U.S. State Department takes Libya off its list of states sponsoring
terrorism.

[11]
Statement by Acting Under Secretary for Political Affairs William J. Burns, at
U.S. House of Representatives, Hearing Before the Committee on International
Relations, "Libya: Progress on the Path Toward Cautious
Reengagement," March 16, 2005, 109th Congress, No.
109-25, http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/archives/109/20056.pdf (accessed
Sept. 29, 2009), p. 4.

[13]
“Confirmation of Gene A. Cretz as U.S. Ambassador to Libya,” U.S.
Department of State Office of the Spokesman, November 28, 2009,
http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2008/November/20081128140821EAifaS0.3752405.html
(accessed Aug.12, 2009).

[21]
Matthew Brunwasser and Elaine Sciolino, “Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian
doctor freed from captivity”, New York Times, July 24, 2007,
available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/world/europe/24iht-nurses.5.6813495.html?pagewanted=all
(accessed August 3, 2009).

[30]
According to the Libyan political system, Basic People’s Congresses exist
in every local administrative unit (sha`biyya). Each Basic People’s
Congress elects a People’s Committee (lajna sha`biyya lil –mahalla)
as an executive body that appoints a local representative to the General People’s
Congress (Mu’tamar al-Sha`b al-`Amm), the equivalent of a national
legislative assembly.